Police state

Police state is a term that originally designated a state regulated by a civil administration, but since the middle of the 20th Century, the term has "taken on the emotional and derogatory meaning of a government that exercises power arbitrarily through the police."[1]

The inhabitants of a police state experience restrictions on their mobility, and on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force which operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state.[2]Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law to German jurisprudence, contrasted the Rechtsstaat ("legal" or "constitutional" state) with the aristocraticPolizeistaat ("police state").[3]

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History of usage[edit]

The term "police state" was first used in 1851, in reference to the use of a national police force to maintain order, in Austria.[4] The Oxford English Dictionary traces the phrase "police State" back to 1851. The German term Polizeistaat came into English usage in the 1930s with reference to totalitarian governments that had begun to emerge in Europe.[5]

Genuine police states are fundamentally authoritarian, and are often dictatorships. However the degree of government repression varies widely among societies.

In times of national emergency or war, the balance which may usually exist between freedom and national security often tips in favour of security. This shift may lead to allegations that the nation in question has become, or is becoming, a police state.

Because there are different political perspectives as to what an appropriate balance is between individual freedom and national security, there are no definitive objective standards to determine whether the term "police state" applies to a particular nation at any given point in time. Thus, it is difficult to evaluate objectively the truth of allegations that a nation is, or is not becoming, a police state. One way to view the concept of the police state and the free state is through the medium of a balance or scale, where any law focused on removing liberty is seen as moving towards a police state, and any law which limits government oversight is seen as moving towards a free state.[6]

An electronic police state is one in which the government aggressively uses electronic technologies to record, organize, search, and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens.[7][8]

Examples of states with related attributes[edit]

The Soviet Union and its many satellite states, including East Germany and those that were part of the Soviet bloc, had extensive and repressive police and intelligence services (such as the KGB); approximately 2.5% of the East German adult population served as informants for the Stasi.[9]

Nazi Germany, a dictatorship, was brought into being through a nominal democracy, yet gradually exerted more and more repressive controls over its people in the lead-up to World War II. Nazi Germany was indeed a police state, using the SS and the Gestapo to assert control over the population from the 1930s until the end of the war.[10]

During the period of Apartheid, the South African government maintained police state attributes such as banning people and organizations, arresting political prisoners, and maintaining segregated living communities and restricting movement and access.[11]

Augusto Pinochet's Chile was a police state[12] exhibiting "repression of public liberties, the elimination of political exchange, limiting freedom of speech, abolishing the right to strike, freezing wages."[13]

The region of North Korea has long had elements of a police state, from the Juche -style Silla kingdom,[18] to the imposition of a fascist police state by the Japanese,[18] to the police state imposed and maintained by the Kim family.[19] Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has ranked North Korea last or second last in their test of press freedom since the index's introduction, stating that the ruling Kim family control all of the media.[20][21]

Fictional police states[edit]

Fictional police states have been featured in a number of media ranging from novels to films to video games. George Orwell's 1984 has been described as "the definitive fictional treatment of a police state, which has also influenced contemporary usage of the term".[22]